The Our Father: Meaning of the Lord's Prayer and Why It Comes Before Communion

At Mass, just before Communion, the priest introduces the Our Father with the words "we dare to say." In this session of The Mass Explained, Dr. Brant Pitre opens up the Lord's Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples (Matthew 6:9–13) and shows why the Church places it here, on the threshold of Holy Communion. Drawing on the earliest sources — the first-century Didache (which already prescribes praying it three times a day with the doxology "for the power and the glory are yours forever"), the Church Fathers (Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great), and St. Thomas Aquinas — he unfolds the ancient and Eucharistic meaning of the petition "give us this day our daily bread," and why Aquinas called the Our Father "the most perfect of prayers."

Key passages & sources examined: the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:1–4); the Didache (1st century) on the prayer and its doxology; St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory the Great; St. Thomas Aquinas on "daily bread" and the perfection of the prayer; and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.